PAINTING

Ghiberti, some works of Donate, and the Christ of Philippo Brunelleschi, when the first symptoms of imitation appeared in the frescos of Tommaso da San Giovanni, commonly called Masaccio, from the total neglect of his appearance and person. Masaccio first conceived that parts are to constitute a whole; that composition ought to have a centre, expre ion truth, and execution unity: his line deserves attention, though his subjects led him not to investigation of form; and the shortne of his Hfe forbade his extending those elements which Raphael, nearly a century afterwards, carried to perfection." Masaccio, who was born in Tuscany in 1417, is considered the father of the second or middle age of painting. His death, caused, it is supposed, by poison, occurred in 1443. Andrea Montegna, born at Padua in 1431, was a disciple of Jacopo Squarcione. Though correct in his drawing, well versed in perspective, and apparently acquainted with the antique, albeit the best antique statues had not then come to light, his neglect of nature Induced a crudene of taste and grotesquene of fancy. He died in 1517, having been the first who practised the art of engraving in Italy. In this place we must not forget the master of so great a man as Leonardo da Vinci, Andrea Verocchio, a Florentine, born in 1432. He was well skilled in geometry, optics, music, architecture, sculpture, and painting; the last whereof he is said to have abandoned, because, in a picture whereon he was engaged of the baptism of our Saviour, his pupil, Leonardo, had, under his order, painted in an angel holding up some part of our Saviour's garment so far excelling Andrea's own figures that, enraged at being outdone by a youth, he resolved never again to wield the pencil. It is said he was the first who preserved individual likene by moulding the face in plaster of Paris. Leonardo da Vinci, of noble descent, and born about 1445 in a castle so named near Florence, surpa ed all his predece ors. His powers seem to have been unlimited: he was an admirable sculptor and architect, a skilful musician, an excellent poet, expert in anatomy and chemistry, and well versed in all parts of the mathematics. Rubens had a very high opinion of his works, and especially of his Cenacolo, in the refectory of the Do mini cans at Milan, which " he abandoned without finishing the head of Christ, exhausted by a wild chase after models for the heads and hands of the apostles: had he been able to conceive the centre, the radii would have followed of course." He was many years director of the academy of painting at Milan, which city he much benefitted by his contrivance of the canal that supplies it with water from the river Adda. He had the honour of expiring in the arms of Francis I. — an honour by which destiny atoned to that monarch for his future disaster at Pavia, when he became a captive. His death took place in 1520. The last master of this period was Bartolomeo dell a Porta. Though not endowed with the comprehension of Leonardo, he first gave gradation to colour, form and ma es to drapery, and dignity to execution. Fra Bartolomeo, as he was called, being a member of a religious order, was a native of Savignano, a village about ten miles from Florence, and was born in 1469. Nudities were scarcely ever represented by him, though he was a perfect master of drawing the human figure. He was the first who used the lay figure. Fuseli says of him, " He was the true master of Raphael, whom his tuition weaned from the meanne of Pietro Perugino, and prepared for the mighty style of Michael Angelo Buonaroti." Of this master, the greatest beyond comparison that ever appeared, we cannot refram from again quoting the same author at considerable length, to which, if nece ary, might be added the testimony of Sir Joshua Reynolds, whose parting wish, when he took leave of the Royal Academy, was that the last words he might pronounce within its walls might be the name of this wonder of mankind. " Sublimity of conception, grandeur of form, and breadth of manner, are the elements of Michael Angelo's style. By these principles, he selected or rejected the objects of imitation. As painter, as sculptor, as architect, he attempted, and, above anj' other man, succeeded, to unite magnificence of plan, and endle variety of subordinate parts, with the utmost simplicity and breadth. His line is uniformly grand; character and beauty were admitted only as far as they could be made subservient to grandeur. The child, the female, meanne , deformity, were by him indiscriminately stamped with grandeur. A beggar rose from his hand the patriarch of poverty; the hump of his dwarf is impre ed with dignity; nis women are moulds of generation; his infants teem with the man; his men are a race of giants." Again, " He is the inventor of epic painting, in that sublime circle of the Sistine Chapel, which exhibits the origin, the progre , and the final dispensations of theocracy." Michael Angelo was of noble family, and born at Castel Caprese, near Florence, in 1474. His master was Domenico Gfhirlandaio. He died in great wealth, at Rome, in 15G4; from thence his remains were removed to Florence, and there honourably inferred. His principal disciples were Marcello Venusti, I 871 II Ro o, Giorgio Vasari, and Fra Basti a no. Raphael Sanzio d'Urbino was born on Good Friday in the year 1483, and died on Good Friday in the year 1520. The grace and mild genius of Raphael were, perhaps, much more capable of exciting our sympathies than the burst of inspiration which the works of the last-named master universally exhibited. As Michael Angelo was the father of epic painting, so was Raphael that of dramatic painting. •' If, separately taken, the line of Raphael has been excelled in correctne , elegance, and energy, his colour far surpa ed in tone, and truth, and harmony; his ma es in roundne , and his chiaro-oscuro in effect: considered as instruments of pathos, his pictures have never been equalled; and in composition, invention, expre ion, and the power of telling a story, he has never been approached." Giulio Romano was his greatest pupil. His conceptions were more extraordinary, more profound, and more elevated than even those of the master himself. His style was drier and harder than any of Raphael's school, and he was frequently harsh and ungraceful. He died at the age of fifty-four, in the year 1.^6. Giorgio del Castel Franco, called, because of his size and beauty, Giorgione, and Tiziano Vecelli, combined to form the alluring and fascinating charm of colour. Born in the Venetian States, and in the same year, 1477, they laid the foundation of the Venetian school. Of the latter, our profe or says, " he penetrated the e ence and the general principle of the substances before him, and on these established his theory of colour. He invented that breadth of local tint which no imitation has attained; and first expre ed the negative nature of shade: his are the charms of glazing, and the mystery of reflexes, by which he detached, rounded, connected, or enriched his objects. His harmony is le indebted to the force of light and shade, or the artifices of contrast, than to a due balance of colour, equally remote from monotony and spots. His backgrounds seem to be dictated by nature. Landscape, whether it be considered as the transcript of a spot, or the rich combination of congenial objects, or as the scene of a phenomenon, dates its origin from him: he is the father of portrait painting, of resemblance with form, character with dignity, and costume with subordination." Antonio Laeti, or Allegri, called Correggio, from the place of his birth, in the duchy of Modena, completed the charm s of colouring and chiaro,oscuro. Giulio Romano, when he saw the Leda and Venus he had painted for Frederic duke of Modena, declared he thought it impo ible for colouring to be carried farther. His chief works are at Modena and Parma; at which last place he pa ed the greater portion of his life, and died at the age of forty, in the year 1534. Though the power of Correggio's colouring was great, still greater was that of his chiaro-oscuro. " The bland central light of a globe, imperceptibly gliding through lucid dem i-tints into rich reflected shades, composes the spell of Correggio, and affects us with the soft emotions of a delicious dream." The merits of Raphael are pathos and character; the power of Titian was his colour, and of Correggio his harmony. We have not space to dwell on the lively genius of Pordinone, who disputed the superiority of Titian, the meagre style of Andrea Vannuchi, surnamed del Sarto, nor the extraordinary vigour and puerile imbecility of conception of Pellegrino Tibaldi; but we must not pa without notice the name of Sebastiano del Piombo, a Venetian, who died at the age of 62, in 1547. His name, Del Piombo, is derived from an office he held in the management of the lead mines, given him by pope Clement- VII. For some time he practised the science of music, to which he was bred; but the fascinations of painting drew him aside from his original pursuit, and he became a disciple of old Gio-Ballino, continued his studies under Giorgione, and, having attained considerable perfection in colouring, went to Rome. Here he so ingratiated himself with Michael Angelo, by joining the party against Raphael, that he was a isted in his designs by that great master, and especially in that wonderful picture, now in the National Gallery here, of the Raising of Lazarus, which gained the universal applause of Rome, and was even put on a par with the celebrated picture of the Transfiguration by Raphael. Equally favoured by Michael Angelo was Daniel Ricciarelli of Volterra, in whose picture of Christ and the Women, in the Descent from the Cro , as well as in that of Sebastian's just mentioned, the master hand that directed them is manifest. The depravation of the style of Michael Angelo is sufficiently visible in the works of Giorgio Vasari, born at Arezzo in 1514, to whom the world is more indebted for the labours of his pen, in the History of the Lives of the most celebrated Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, first published at Florence, in 1550, than those of his pencil: him Fuseli describes as the most superficial artist, and the most abandoned mannerist of his time. " He overwhelmed the palaces of the Medici and of the popes, the convents and churches of Italy, with a deluge of mediocrity, commended by rapidity and shamele bravura of hand: he alone did more work than all the artists of Tuscany together; and to 3 K 4 [s. 884]